Keep the Story, Leave Room for What Is

Stories are not enemies of a truthful life. Legends, hopes, and imagined futures can console us, delight us, and help us name what we want to make possible. We need not discard them to meet the present honestly.

The trouble begins when a story becomes more authoritative than what is happening. We have pictured a relationship turning out one way, so we cannot hear what the other person is saying now. We expected a career to deliver a certain self, so the work we actually have becomes invisible.

“This is it” can sound like a command to resign ourselves. It need not be. It names a starting point: these are the conditions, feelings, resources, and consequences present today. Whether we act, wait, ask for help, or change course, this is the scene from which the choice is made.

We can enjoy a fairy tale as a tale and still recognize when it has begun to govern our expectations. A story may point toward a commitment; it cannot guarantee the result. Nor does the present have to be good in order to be real.

The question is not whether we should have stories. It is whether we can let one stand beside the facts without covering them. When the present is allowed to be present, imagination can serve the next step instead of replacing the ground beneath it.